Royal Bank of Canada’s wealth division has appointed Paul Patterson as co-leader of its ultra-high net worth initiative to succeed sector veteran Michael Lagopoulos, who is set to retire five years after setting in train an extraordinary RBC acquisition and hiring spree.

Michael Lagopoulos

Michael Lagopoulos

Patterson will head up RBC’s initiative to retain business from families worth in excess of $30m, alongside Gay Mitchell, who is based in Canada. As part of the reshuffle, Patterson will move to London from Jersey, where was in charge of accounts based in the UK, Channel Isles and Caribbean.

Stuart Rutledge, currently head of global wealth strategy and transformation, will move from Toronto to Jersey to take on Patterson’s former job. All three individuals will continue to report to RBC group head of wealth George Lewis.

Lagopoulos has worked at RBC for 26 years, heading up its international wealth division prior to the creation of the prestige ultra-high net worth division in 2010. Soon after arriving in London in 2007, he told Financial News: "My relocation signals RBC's commitment to growing our wealth management business outside North America."

He wasn't joking. RBC went on to buy bond manager Blue Bay Asset Management for £960m. Earlier this year it bought Coutts’ Latin American business, which services accounts worth $2 billion. It hired a stream of wealth advisers, including such well known names as UK head of private clients Philip Harris, previously at UBS, and Martin Heale, head of Americas for the UK, previously a senior executive at Kleinwort Benson.

Lagopolous will retire in October. A spokesman for RBC said its wealth division wanted to double the number of relationship managers in the UK to 100, and RBC is continuing to hire expertise elsewhere in the world. It has reconfirmed its interest in buying another asset manager, possibly in the equity sector. RBC has been able to take advantage of its relatively stable position to win business from other banks, and expects to continue to do so.

RBC’s determination to grow market share also illustrates the relatively upbeat stance of the wealth sector, where families have not been as badly hit by the global recession as the rest of society. Swiss bank Julius Baer has confirmed an ambitious plan to buy Merrill Lynch’s wealth business outside the US for $900m. The number of wealth deals has hit record levels over the last 18 months, as banks jostle for position.

Rothschild’s private bank confirmed this week that it has taken on former Financial News rising star James Peterson as a director from UBS, with Daniel Riley also agreeing to leave the Swiss bank to become an assistant director. Asset managers are increasingly switching resources to their wholesale divisions, serving wealth investment platforms.

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Despite selling its Latin American business, Coutts is rivalling RBC in the speed of its hiring. It has recently hired senior adviser Sabrina Del Prete, derivatives products chief Ben Hunt and head of products Keith Wilson from Barclays Wealth.